


A Faceless Threat

by inherbookishhead



Series: The One with a Gift [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inherbookishhead/pseuds/inherbookishhead
Summary: ---Updated with Chapter 6 on 13.05.2020---It is exactly three hours after Rose Tyler and the Metacrisis Doctor have been left on the beach that a new alien threat appears to be hovering over a still celebrating Earth. Rose and the Doctor are plunging into action and it would be just as good as the old times if not for the fact that the Doctor's new body is counting hours to the total shutdown, while he and Rose are stuck on the base in outer space, and more and more people around the world are dying from a mysterious poison.
Relationships: Jackie Tyler & Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler (Pete's World), Metacrisis Tenth Doctor & Jackie Tyler, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Pete Tyler (Pete's World) & Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who) & Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Series: The One with a Gift [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684144
Comments: 36
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue: A Gate-Crasher

**Author's Note:**

> I still can't believe I'm posting this story. Perhaps, the main reason is to share my take on the topic of these two deeply beloved characters (that has been tackled, well, due to AO3, in another 153 pages of fanfics), speculate on how they would start out and what is still to come.  
> In terms of continuity, I take the TV series (season 1-4) and BF audio dramas (Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon and two short trips) as my canon.  
> The latest short story from the target book is something I wish I never saw and thus is regarded as an alternative take of the author, which has nothing to do with the rest of the official canon or my take on the characters.

“Guys, do you see that, too? The stars are back!” said Tara as she finally raised the blinds. She turned to her colleagues with watery eyes and a huge smile on her tired bony face. “Rose must have found the Doctor!”

The woman swiftly turned her head back to the sky, as if to make sure the stars were still there: they were and that’s when the unshed tears of relief started rolling down her cheeks. 

Out of all hard days that planet Earth had experienced, today was “Day X”. It all started at noon when an enormous unknown celestial object started to ominously hover over the planet’s surface, and no one could agree on what kind of phenomenon that was. Of course, they couldn’t: all the machines went haywire and weren’t able to produce the simplest readings on the most basic things. The situation deteriorated quickly from there since just in an hour people started disappearing into nothingness right in the middle of the streets as if they were bumping into invisible curtains from which there was no way out. That’s when panic broke out: some of the pedestrians preached that the day of holy punishment had arrived, and humanity was about to pay for its sins, media engaged every second John who claimed to be an expert to utter total rubbish which they called “highly plausible theories”, the government tried to placate the chaotic mob through the megaphones. All in all, a very stressful Thursday. 

Torchwood, on the other hand, had been having enough on their plates for months. Dimension walls were collapsing, and so was Earth. That’s why a dimension hole punch team - well, officially the dimension cannon department - were spending their whole days on the job, where they were monitoring each bit of information coming from Rose Tyler, who jumped from one parallel world to another, and trying to calibrate the dimension cannon to focus on the universe that had a mysterious Doctor in it. What had started as a crazy scientist’s dream coming true, turned into two years of hard work and the mental weight of knowing the possible future that hung like a Sword of Damocles over their heads.

A dark-haired man put his cup of lukewarm Earl Grey on the desk and quickly trotted to the opposite side of the room, tripping over his own feet in the process. He opened the other window wide and dangerously leaned his body halfway out of it. 

“Whoa, Clive! Be careful! We don’t want to start our celebration by scratching your bones from the ground, do we?” said Tara. She wiped her tears and walked over to Clive’s side.

On his part, Clive didn’t move an inch but rather strained his eyes to see a single object he was looking forward to seeing more than the stars themselves. 

“Anyone sees a blue phone box up there?” he asked.

Owen, who was the only one to still be fully absorbed in his computer, rolled his eyes. “Oh, give this extradimensional weirdo a pill finally.”

“Shut it, Owen,” Tara singsonged. She turned her head in Clive’s direction and conspiratorially whispered, “Well, I still bet that was some sort of a wild metaphor we are not getting. I mean, a blue telephone box flying around the universe …” she chuckled, “it’s so ridiculous, it’s actually hilarious, come to think of it.” 

A sudden loud noise made everyone in the room jump. Clive dangerously wobbled in the window frame and Tara took it as an opportunity to slightly pull him back to the room.

“Bloody fireworks,” mumbled Owen.

People were celebrating. The sky burst with dozens of colourful sparkles, and a puff of wind brought the scent of smoke and sulfur into the room. 

Clive was totally entranced in the scene he was watching. He leaned to the side of the window with a soft expression on his face. “My, I’d give an arm and a leg to see that TARDIS of hers in the sky.” 

Rose Tyler, a bright-eyed girl who knew the version of his other self he never got to see, and a passionate fighter for humanity’s future who found him in another universe, proved his daft alien theories right and even once managed to reunite him with the love of his life - all while making an interdimensional quest to find one right sort of alien who would fix everything. Oh, he’d miss her. 

“Do we know if the disappeared have returned?” asked Jake as he entered the room. His bloodshot eyes were darting everywhere and his usually spiky hair was currently sticking to his sweaty forehead.

“That’s what I’m still trying to find out. Any news from Pete?” asked Owen.

“Not really, I haven’t received any updates from him since I returned. He is currently on the phone with Jackie, though, seems like she and the others, whoever they are, are on a zeppelin, coming back here,” answered Jake. 

“Jackie Tyler was on the other side, too?” Owen's eyes widened more in horror than in shock.

“Well, hello there!” said Tara. ”How did  _ you  _ miss that?” She left her spot at the window and reached their tiny kitchenette to pour some tea, which she gave to still shaking Jake. 

“Yeah, she made Mickey give her a spare dimension jumper. She didn’t want to leave Rose on her own,” explained Clive. 

“Oh, wonderful,” said Owen. “As if the collapse of dimensions and that bumpy iron junk with annoying catchphrase weren’t enough, Jackie Tyler decided to go and make things even harder. Did Pete  _ really  _ allow this?”

“I wager he didn’t know,” said Jake, taking a sip and trying to calm his breathing.

“Well, more like he didn’t have any say in it, I bet. Have you seen her when she’s angry?” Tara looked at Jake and they exchanged knowing smiles.

Owen rolled his eyes.

“She’s a feisty woman, though. She even jumped with Rose the other day. And honestly, what would you have done in her shoes?” asked Clive, still concentrated on the sky outside.

“I’d certainly get a more comfortable and less glittery pair for starters,” sighed Owen.

“You know, Owen, you surely don’t have to be such an arse,” Jake chuckled. 

This time Owen didn’t offer anything in reply, but the security system of the Torchwood facility did: red flashing lights, accompanied by the alarm broke any festive mood the team was getting into. 

“Bloody brilliant,” Owen sneered at his computer. “And who of you, lot, jinxed it this time?” He turned his monitor to the team. “Seems like we have an alien invasion on our schedule.”


	2. A short way home

Rose watched the Doctor’s very calculated attempts to rearrange whatever was lying around on his plate. After two hours of floating in a zeppelin, he managed to explain the metacrisis in the most detailed tirade imaginable twice: once to her and once to Jackie who joined in later and offhandedly called him Mr Xerox. Rose slowly nodded in agreement both times, although, when it came to it, all she knew was that there were two of him now: this one apparently grew out of that severed hand, which had been cut off by a Sycorax leader and pickled for who knows how much time in a glass jar by none other than Jack Harkness himself, who magically turned out to be alive. Rose didn’t know whether to cry or laugh at the absurdity of the situation, so she decided to let the thoughts on the matter brew inside her for a while. 

Even though this new Doctor had the same face, there was something about him that felt different and it bothered Rose to no end that she couldn’t spot what that something was. He asked her how he looked, because of course he did, and while Rose was thinking what to make of him, Jackie replied that the t-shirt didn’t really go with the blue suit, which was, by the way, too big for him and that he looked wrong without a tie. And just like that, his hopeful mood sank into oblivion. 

Then, to bridge a sudden heavy silence between the three of them, the Doctor held a whole lecture on the wonderful mechanics of zeppelins and named at least five theories on how those airships evolved differently since Hindenburg never happened in this universe. Rose wondered for a brief second who out of the two Doctors would outtalk each other. She suspected the new one. Or maybe, it was his poorly hidden nervousness talking. 

After seeing the lack of enthusiasm in Rose’s replies the Doctor moved on to have a very lively conversation with the pilot and the crew, some of which were quite under the spell of his charming smile. Finally, the Doctor turned back to his seat opposite Rose to announce that he was properly (“Oh, that is very human, isn’t it? Blimey, is this how a human’s stomach gurgles? That’s a whole other language by itself! Reminds me of the Kartanetes I met back in the days. Nasty little creatures. Have I told you about them, Rose? With this new physiology, I bet I'd be brilliant at negotiating with them now.”) famished. Now he was silent at last, not being able to simultaneously munch that whole lot of food he had stuffed into his mouth and talk. _Yet_ , that was _._

So here they sat, Jackie (still) talking on the phone with Pete and side glancing the Doctor from time to time, and the Doctor, very carefully making a mess of his salad in attempts to hide whatever that green stuff on his plate was. Rose strained her eyes: was it courgette? Bell pepper? _Gherkins_? He didn’t seem to have a problem with those before. 

Then it struck her: she remembered still being small, seven or eight at best, and having to endure beans in her breakfast almost every morning. And oh, she hated them with passion. Jackie Tyler being Jackie Tyler, would not give up without a fight, so after some futile bickering, she switched to persuading Rose to eat those highly nutritious gifts of nature, going as far as arranging them in what appeared to be a heart shape. That’s why clever as Rose thought she was at that time, she always made sure to hide a part of the portion under the remnants of the egg, smash the other with a fork and spread what was left all over the plate to convince mom she ate at least something. Jackie, seeing Rose’s triumphant smile of a smooth criminal, simply used to sigh and take the plate from her. Sometimes it was Mickey, who was coming to Rose’s rescue and bringing his plate closer to hers so that she could quickly sneak those beans on his without Jackie noticing. Oh, those good old days when her main enemy was legumes. The funny part, though, she came to like them just a couple years later much to Jackie’s relief. Little Rose was certainly as good at hiding the food from Jackie as the Doctor his differences from her, and he wasn’t eight by far. 

Rose closed her eyes and leaned into the softness of a zeppelin seat. An almost silent hum of the aircraft was a welcome lullaby to her ears. She didn’t want to think about what had happened on the beach and turned her head to face the window, trying to watch the scenery outside. Stars were back in their place. At least it seemed so. That was good, she supposed. The little bursts of fireworks below were a wonderful thing to watch: yellow, red, blue sparkles illuminated the dark sky. This little portion of human-made magic celebrated something happy and important. Even that magic, however, was not enough to let Rose truly enjoy the victory.

Deep down Rose always knew this was going to happen. The gnawing feeling was lying half-dormant at the back of her mind even when she was indulging herself in picturing that perfect reunion with the Doctor. So when she saw a blink of the TARDIS for the last time, a part of her expected this outcome, no surprise, no anger. She felt...resigned. 

Rose thought of this new Doctor: an ancient, larger than life entity suddenly chained down to the ordinary, stuck in the everyday life, currently picking out those little nasty gherkins on a slower-than-ever zeppelin. _Don’t you see what he’s trying to give you?_ Donna had said. Donna, new companion, Rose’s replacement. His _equal_. That one stung, though, even if Rose couldn’t argue the fact. What exactly was her Doctor giving her, though, Rose mused. Was this Doctor a gift? Could you gift people now? Was her Doctor expecting her to be happy at this one’s expense? Or was he left here to pacify her so she wouldn’t try jumping again? Was he punishing her for wanting to come back? 

Rose was properly and utterly exhausted and didn’t know how to deal with what she was _given_. _It would have been easier if they both had left_ , she thought. At least, she would be able to properly cry or be angry, without him here, constantly watching her from the corner of his eye. The only feeling accompanying Rose was guilt as if she herself suddenly became a trap this new Doctor got stuck in. A trap she never ever intended to be. _Never say never ever_. Indeed. 

Rose was suddenly torn out of her reverie by a loud clunk as the knife that the Doctor was holding fell to the floor, bumping into every possible obstacle on its way. 

“Oi, you are gonna give me a heart attack!” said Jackie, dramatically clasping her free hand to her heart, the motion which the Doctor almost repeated, but stopped himself halfway. 

“Oi,” he did his best to imitate her, “don’t overdramatize, Jackie, you are far too healthy for that. Besides, your heart is a whole inch lower!” He pointedly looked at her hand. 

“Pete, hang on a mo,” she clasped her phone to her chest and turned fully to the Doctor which made Rose squirm in her seat. “And you would know, wouldn’t you? Maybe if you stopped trying to stare a hole through my daughter, you’d manage a basic task of holding your cutlery. Yes, I saw you!”

Rose was so far out just a moment ago, she hadn’t even noticed.

“Do you need any help?” a zeppelin attendant came to rescue.

“No worries, love, we are good,” Jackie didn't even bat an eye. She and the Doctor still held their little glaring contest. And the Doctor wasn’t winning. 

“Can we have one more plate please?” Rose asked.

“Sure, I’ll be back in a second,” the attendant smiled before disappearing behind the black curtain. She returned in a minute, curiously glancing over Jackie and the Doctor, who still seemed to go all lightning and thunder at each other.

To the Doctor’s wide-eyed surprise, Rose took his plate to gather the offensive gherkin salad from it. “Well, new you, new taste buds, I believe,” she explained, pushing his plate back to his side. “You don’t have to like the same stuff you did before.”

“But I do,” his earnest and slightly frustrated expression told Rose he was not talking about his taste in food. 

“Who knows, all I’m saying is maybe you’ll finally come to appreciate pears,” she smiled in attempts to lighten the mood.

The Doctor scrunched his face in utter disgust that was expressively saying she went too far. 

“Rose Tyler, I’m telling you that is not going to happen. I am more likely to grow from another hand than to ever like _that._ I’m.., I’m not planning to grow from any other part of my body, Jackie”, he sighed when Jackie once again threw a horrified look at him after finally hanging up on Pete. 

Rose had barely registered her own phone ringing. She picked it up immediately, relishing the distraction. 

“Rose! Are you there?”

“Clive? Yes, yes I’m here. Is everything all right?”

 _I’ve got her on the phone!_ she heard him yell to someone. “Rose, thank God! The stars are back, you made it!” He cheered. “Have you found the Doctor? Did he save us? Are you in the TARDIS? Are you talking from your universe?” He made a small stop to breathe and continued, “The thing is, we really need your help right now. We’ve got a situation here, you know.”

“Clive.. hold on a second. Which situation?”

“Code red,” he said, then seemed to hesitate.

“Code red?” asked Rose, frowning in confusion. _What is it?_ mouthed Jackie, but Rose shushed her. 

“Yes! No, wait. It’s code mauve, I repeat code mauve. Or is it red? Oh blimey, I’m rubbish at this.”

“Clive,” Rose closed her eyes and sighed, “we don’t have a code mauve, or red, or pink or whatever is there on the rainbow. Why don’t you just tell me what’s happened?”

“Yeah, right, not in this institution. Sorry, thought if anyone listens to our conversation...anyways... we’ve got an alien invasion over here,” he finally announced.

“Are you sure?”

“Clear as day,” he said, then added, “Not like this has been, eh? Owen here showed us what the alarm was wailing about.” 

Rose strained her eyes as she tried to outline at least something out of the ordinary from her zeppelin window but saw nothing.

“Are you completely certain it wasn’t, I don’t know, some sort of a residual effect of the dimension collapse, Clive?”

“Yes. Owen says the ship has a cloaking device so you can’t simply see it with your eyes. But he saw it on his computer.”

“Alright, we are heading there then. Tell Pete I asked to initiate a recharge of three dimension jumpers, this time within our dimension. Just read the device coordinates and bring us to the facility. We can’t waste time.”

“Wait, aren’t you... in the TARDIS?” he sounded almost disappointed. Well, she knew the feeling.

“Clive, just do what I ask, please.”

“Got it, dimension jumpers. I’m on it.”

“Thanks”, she hung the phone, then switched on three little yellow discs and handed them over to the Doctor and her mom. “Hope you’ve also had enough of our lovely zeppelin ride because it seems we’ve got an invasion to stop. Welcome back to Pete’s World.” 


	3. In the gingerbread house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, you, sir, certainly don’t look like a rap artist,” said Clive, nervously smiling at the Doctor and still holding his hand. 
> 
> Out of all possible reactions to his being, this had certainly never been on the list of what the Doctor had expected. And he had been called a lot of things: the Oncoming Storm, the Death Bringer, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Lonely Angel. Well, there were also less favourable ones, like a long streak of nothing, dumbo, martian, spaceman. Oh, Donna. 
> 
> ...or how the Doctor gets to meet the team, do some hacking and be kidnapped to an alien spaceship.

There was a very good reason the Doctor hated to use any sort of teleporters. As soon as he pressed the button of a dimension jumper, he felt all wobbly and dizzy, and what’s worse, all that delicious food he had consumed was currently protesting against his stomach and demanded to be set free. He blinked a few times. His newly formed mind immediately scanned the surroundings, whereas his body had trouble standing upright. The only thing that somehow stabilized him was Rose’s hand in his. The Doctor turned his head to look at her, which caused him another fit of nausea: she was standing there with her feet firmly on the ground, not affected by the jump in the slightest. He wondered how many times she had done those jumps. 

As his vision finally became clear he found himself in a rather spacious room full of all sorts of wires, pipes and big electrical equipment. The light was quite dim, and it smelled like metal, dust, bits of human perspiration and … hints of Earl Grey?

He saw a petite woman raising her head and peering at them from behind what seemed to be a huge crescent-shaped control panel. Three seconds later the door opened and two other people immediately barged in. Jackie was the first one to let go of Rose’s hand and nothing short of collapse into her husband’s embrace. Pete Tyler whispered something to Jackie, then locked his eyes with Rose and gave her a reassuring smile.

“I’m happy you are safe, love,” he said, his eyes full of emotion. “And I’m so glad to have you _both_ back.” He nodded to the Doctor in acknowledgement. 

“Rose!” A smiling man approached them in his bearlike stride and enveloped Rose in the biggest hug he was capable of, making her let go of the Doctor’s hand. “I never thought I would see you again!”

“‘m happy to see you, too,” Rose croaked in reply. 

The Doctor took a moment to look around. This universe’s Torchwood was quite shabbier than its counterpart in the prime universe. The Doctor was torn between eagerness to get his hands on all of those machines and figure out just how advanced this institution was, and a strong urge to shut the whole place down completely. On the good side, he’d already conjured up a solid idea on how to set the right environment for his TARDIS to grow, or at least make a new, more enhanced sonic screwdriver. _And why on Earth didn’t he take a spare one when he had a chance?_ On the not so good side, he was 99.7% sure these humans were playing with something they couldn’t begin to understand. After all, Torchwood had separated him from Rose in the first place. And it bothered him. That and the fact that said Rose was currently in a heartfelt embrace, whereas he hadn’t felt her arms around him since the moment this body was spawned. And no, the kiss didn’t count. Well, it did, and it was lovely, very lovely, he would repeat it at any time and preferably without distractions, but he wanted her to hug him as if her arms were the only place in the universes he belonged. 

“Oh and that must be -” The bearlike man said when he shifted his attention to the person standing next to Rose - “The Doctor! I’m Clive Finch, eh, sir.” 

The man clumsily rushed to the Doctor’s side and started to vigorously shake his hand. 

“Big fan, big fan,” he added with a smile. “I’m also not from around here, you know. This young lady -” he nodded in Rose’s direction - “picked me up in a different dimension, after showing up at my door asking if I believed in aliens. From then on we are a team. We’ve travelled to different parallel universes together,” he said proudly, “to find you, mind.” 

“Clive,” the Doctor’s face went into a concentrated frown. “Rose? Is this by any chance the same Clive that-”

“Yeap,” she replied without waiting for the rest of the question. 

“Well, you, sir, certainly don’t look like a rap artist,” said Clive, nervously smiling at the Doctor and still holding his hand. Out of all possible reactions to his being, this had certainly never been on the list of what the Doctor had expected. And he had been called a lot of things: the Oncoming Storm, the Death Bringer, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Lonely Angel. Well, there were also less favourable ones, like a long streak of nothing, dumbo, martian, spaceman. Oh, _Donna_. 

“Wait until you hear him explain things,” Rose said over her shoulder on her way to the dimension cannon control. She joined the petite woman that brought them there.

“Although, more so, than an alien, I suppose,” Clive continued. “You see, I always had this image in my head that real aliens would be some blue or green blobs, with a couple of bumps here and there, and a lot of slime dripping down their mouths, probably. You know, not so …” he carefully regarded the Doctor, “human-looking.” 

The Doctor opened his mouth, then closed it again. At first, he was not treated as the _real_ _Doctor_ , now, he was not even seen as a _real_ _alien_. What next? Not a real genius? And even worse: not really foxy? He glanced at Rose as if her expression could bring him reassurance, but she seemed to be contemplating whatever the woman behind the control panel had told her. The Doctor opened his mouth again with the intention to say if Mr Clive Finch was inclined so, he could go and try to befriend Slitheen and see for himself what disgusting green alien blobs would do to him, but to his surprise, Rose's voice came across the room.

“He grew out of a hand. Alien enough for you, Clive? Now, let’s concentrate.” She was watching them now, giving the Doctor a look that stopped any witty comeback he was about to spill. 

“Right,” he said instead. He extracted his hand from Clive’s, whose jaw went slack upon hearing that information. 

The Doctor quickly went over to Rose and started playing around with the control panel. There were two hundred and twenty-four buttons and switches waiting to be pressed and his hands itched to poke and see. The calculations this machine was capable of doing was impressive even by his standards. Just as impressive as the size of holes and interdimensional paradoxes it could cause if mishandled. The thought of the possible timelines if that had happened made a cold shiver go down his spine. And Rose just _had_ to go and let them blindly shoot her with it. Well, who was he kidding, that was exactly the thing Rose would do. ‘Jeopardy friendly’ didn’t even cover it by half.

“Rap artist?” he asked, still fully concentrating on examining the control panel. 

Rose still seemed to consider something the other woman had told her and took a moment to reply. 

“That was Clive’s first suggestion when I asked if he knew anyone named the Doctor,” she chuckled. 

“Why would a rap artist call himself the Doctor?” There was literally no proper explanation for it. Well, unless, of course, that so-called artist would be somewhere from Merisonnah system- which he highly doubted- where they heal one another with a special sound produced in their triple vocal cords, but which, to human ears is indistinguishable. 

“Probably because of a slightly different reason a millennia-old alien decided to,” Rose said, then smacked his hand. “Don’t press any buttons!”

The Doctor threw her a look. “I’m 900.”

“You were 900 when I met you. And who knows how many years you’ve been 900 before that.”

“Figures!” he protested.

Rose shook her head. “Doctor, this is Tara, the brains behind the dimension cannon.”

The Doctor regarded the woman standing near Rose. Her posture was tight and she seemed quite shy, trying to hide her nervousness by clasping her hands together and playing with her thumbs. She reminded him of a child who did something she shouldn’t have done and got caught by a parent. Her big hazel eyes, though, radiated warmth. With all the calculations this brain of hers had to do he wondered if she was human, but decided to hold that thought until later. 

“Tara, what an impressive brain you’ve got,” he flashed her a smile. 

“Nice to finally meet you, Doctor. Rose has told us so much about you, and Clive couldn’t shut up about TARDIS.”

“Oi, I was just merely curious!” Clive’s voice echoed from behind.

“Yeah, I can see that,” the Doctor cleared his throat. “My spaceship will have to wait for a wee bit, but meanwhile I have so many questions about this magical machine you’ve built here-”

“And you will be able to ask them all once we deal with the invasion,” said Rose calmly. “We can’t dismantle it just now, anyways.”

“Oh, can’t we, now? And why is that so?” the Doctor didn’t like this turn of events. He didn’t like it _at all_.

“It needs time to completely shut all systems off so that it is safe to actually disassemble the whole construction itself.” It was Tara who answered. “The cannon just facilitated a massive jump of three people, which means it needs to cool down its systems. It might not seem so on the surface, but the interior engine is scorching.” 

“And where is this engine of yours located?” asked the Doctor, although he’d already guessed the answer. 

“Below the basement,” she said. “But don’t worry, it’s completely safe and protected from the outside influence.”

It made the Doctor only more annoyed. “You, humans, always say that before you get it completely out of control. And then boom! Another massive worldwide catastrophe taking hundreds of thousands of lives! Chernobyl, Seveso, Amoco Cadiz, you name it! This machine is not a toy. It tears the fabric of the universe itself. That’s the outside that needs to be protected from this interdimensional monster, or well, specifically from you lot! I can’t believe you jumped with that!” He turned to Rose who met his glare with an even and somehow detached look. 

“What are you talking about?” asked Tara, completely puzzled. 

“Oh brilliant. Wrong universe. NEVER MIND!” the Doctor thundered.

Pete, who was still holding Jackie with one arm, loudly cleared his throat which made everyone turn their attention to him. 

“Now, since most of us are here, and we’ve gotten as lucky as to have the Doctor on our side, let’s get back to the problem at hand. The ship was discovered just over an hour ago when our radars finally started working again. It seems to have a sort of a cloaking filter this time, but it has matched with the blueprints in our database. Seems to be the same scout ship we encountered last year when we had that dealer who wanted to trade Earth to unknown alien species. From the looks of it, he has come back. Owen upstairs will have more information. Rose, please fill in the Doctor on the details.”

“We’ll go talk to him,” nodded Rose. “Tara, watch that the dimension cannon stays idle and prepare everything for the further dismantling. Clive, take mum home, and make sure she and Tony are safe.”

“But Rose, I wanted to come with you!” protested Clive.

“I know, and next time you will. Now I need you to look after mum and Tony.” Clive opened his mouth in protest once again, but Rose continued. “Pete, we will need you to prepare the defence just in case.” 

“I know, love, don’t worry. I’ll manage the others. You go and do what’s necessary,” Pete pulled Jackie closer to his side. The Doctor never saw her that silent before. 

“Roger that, _Control,_ ” Rose accentuated the last word and smiled at Pete, which made him chuckle. There was certainly some internal joke between the two the Doctor was missing. “You’re coming?” She finally looked at the Doctor and urged him to the door.

“Yes, ma’am,” he mockingly saluted, which earned him an irritated look from Rose. He still couldn’t quite believe he was in the same universe as her. Rose Tyler, confidently marching to deal with aliens, giving orders to him of all people.

They took an obscure looking lift to the top floor with an odd number twenty-seven. Rose was suddenly very silent, her measured breathing telling him all her mouth couldn’t.

When the doors opened, the Doctor was met with yet another almost empty floor. Only the voices from the room in the end of the corridor suggested there were people around there, after all. 

“We are relocating,” said Rose after the Doctor peeked in yet another empty room. “Some of our team are already in the new facility, we’ll completely abandon this one right after the cannon is disassembled.”

“Found a building with a better view?”

“Yeah, sort of,” she looked at him and shook her head. “Our new base is in Big Ben. Imagine that.”

“Big Ben? Well, this Torchwood certainly has a style.” He wanted to say that any location was good as long as it wasn't Canary Wharf, but couldn't bring himself to even utter the name of that place.

“It’s not Torchwood anymore either.” They finally approached the big glass door where the voices were coming from. “Starting from next week, it’s UNIT.” 

“UNIT?” With each second in this universe, he felt more like Alice in Wonderland.

“Unified Intelligence Taskforce,” Rose explained. As if he required an explanation for _that_ title. “An initiative by none other than our good old president Harriet Jones.” She turned the knob and opened the door.

Before the Doctor could as much as open his mouth he saw Jake Simmonds rushing to their side.

“Doctor? Rose! What a, what a surprise” He looked at them both and asked, “Where is Mickey?”

“Stayed behind in our... in our home universe,” replied Rose.

“Behind?” he blinked back his tears.

“I’m sorry, Jake”

“I mean, it’s alright, we’ve just been a good team, s’all, it’s not like we’ve ever…” his lips started trembling but he quickly composed himself, “I just thought he’d change his mind, or…” he swallowed, “or at least say goodbye, you know. I mean he did, to the team here, but I was out on the streets and...” 

Rose visibly clenched her jaw and hugged him tightly. 

“Hey, Tyler! I really want to get to Debby’s, get pissed and snog some pretty girl in celebration. The last thing I want to do right now is to handle your alien boyfriend in his stupid attempts to take over this God forsaken planet!” 

“Shut it, Owen!” Jake and Rose said in unison.

The Doctor looked into Owen’s direction. The man was currently leaning against his desk in the far corner of the room with his arms crossed against his chest, which made him look somewhat like a mumpish toad.

“You were the one to discover his ship, weren’t you? I’m the Doctor, very nice to meet you, now show me how you managed to catch his signal, chop-chop!”

Owen skeptically sized him up without moving a muscle, but the Doctor helped himself into Owen’s chair and started working on his computer. 

“Wait, it’s password-protected-” began Owen then saw that the Doctor was already inspecting the code behind the transmission.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your imagination in setting passwords is not that rich, tigerdream34. Ha! Gotcha!” exclaimed the Doctor, standing up from the chair and ruffling his hair. “I’ve got our little friend on the line. We will be able to hear what is happening on the ship. Hey, chaps,” he addressed Owen and Jake, “mind turning the volume up?”

Owen and Jake fixed some wires and the room got filled with a hum from a ship, some beeping noises and the rustle of someone’s movement. Rose came to the Doctor’s side. 

“So, mingled with aliens here, Rose Tyler? Got a _boyfriend_?” asked the Doctor. 

Rose looked at him incredulously. Well, more like with frustrated annoyance and a deeply buried urge to smack him. Oh, he loved spotting those micro-expressions on her lovely human face. He had the whole library of them, safely stacked in the depth of his mind together with instructions on how to react to get himself out of trouble.

“Calls himself Salgur. He is sort of a con man, like Jack when we first met him, just as flirty, but far more ruthless. He tried to sell our species to who knows whom once, but we stopped him. Apparently he found a more generous buyer this time.”

“Well, if I had you to stop me, Rose, I’d try to invade the planet every single day,” he gave her his most charming smile. It didn’t, however, make the intended effect, rather the opposite if he was to judge, and instead of flirting back Rose’s whole expression tensed in shock. 

“You are bleeding,” she said with alarm in her eyes. “Why are you bleeding? Oh my God, what’s happening?” For a moment she was the same young doe-eyed girl that looked at him back at Canary Wharf when he told her she was to go to the parallel universe. Could she ever be more beautiful?

The Doctor wiped his finger under his nose and saw a little scarlet trail on his thumb. 

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” he mused. “This body is still brand new and the biological changes are quite significant, which means it needs time to reconcile my timelord part with the newly born human one.” He took a deep breath. “Nah, nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.” He breathed out a slim golden wave of the regeneration energy. “You see? Just like the last time! Well, it _is_ the last time I see it.” He stopped, the realization suddenly hitting him like a ton of bricks. This was the last time he would ever change the body, get to rediscover himself again and feel that tingling sensation of the newly spawned life...

Rose looked at him sadly as if having the same thoughts.

“Hello intruders!” said a cheery voice from somewhere around Owen’s desk. _So much for being inconspicuous._

“Can say the same about you,” the Doctor replied, snapping back to reality.

Rose seemed to recognise the speaker. “Salgur, turn your ship around and leave the planet. I thought we agreed the last time. We are not for sale! The shop is closed.”

“Blondie!” the voice perked up. “Did you miss me?”

“No, not at all. What on Earth are you even doing here? I’ve got enough trouble without you, if you haven't noticed, the Earth almost collapsed a couple of hours ago. I doubt it will be a lucrative deal for you at the moment. Now, get lost!” 

“Alright,” the voice said. “Let me think. No!” The voice laughed. “No need to engage your fancy little tech, doll, I’ll beam you up myself." 

The Doctor latched onto Rose just in time before she disappeared. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading and feedback! I'm currently having another 2 solid chapters in the pipeline, so hopefully, the next one will be edited and posted in a week or two (depending on how much time my work will take this week).


	4. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sometimes Rose had a feeling that Earth was a sort of a prize in some intergalactic contest, where if you are bloodthirsty, ruthless or, in this case, sly and at least slightly obnoxious, you would certainly look at this planet and think “oh, I’d give it a go”. And then you’d go and put yourself in the long queue, eagerly waiting your turn and rubbing your hands in anticipation."
> 
> The Doctor and Rose get beamed onto the spaceship, where they meet Rose's old friendly foe. Rose tries to avoid the confrontation but there seem to be more to the reason this alien had brought them there. While Rose is doubting whether to stop him at all, the tension between him and the Doctor rises to a critical point, which compromises her own emotional state.

“Argh. How come I was here for years and managed to stay on Earth all the time, even when jumping dimensions, but the day you show up, we get kidnapped right onto a spaceship?” 

Rose disentangled herself from the Doctor’s grip and made a couple steps forward. She desperately tried to sound lighthearted and hide sudden panic that overcame her when she felt one heartbeat in the Doctor’s rapid pulse, which treacherously echoed in her ears even now. 

“Is it a complaint I hear?” the Doctor caught her eye, and the way he wiggled his eyebrows in his own very Doctor-ish way grounded her back to the present. 

“No, just an observation,” she shook her head with a small smile.

The Doctor was looking at her with a soft expression on his face, which made Rose break eye contact and tense up for a completely different reason. She took a deep breath and looked around. 

As much as Rose could tell from her previous spaceship adventures with the Doctor, they landed in a briefing room. Although, with the narrow stripes of light that were slithering up the concave walls, it felt like they were trapped inside a giant light bulb. It was surely just as hot in there. She approached the centre of the room and studied an eerie mushroom-looking table growing from the little platform right above the floor. 

Rose thought about those days when she gleefully explored the universe which she thought was the only one, regarded the stars as something constant and thought that being dumped by Jimmy Stone was probably not that bad since that bugger paled in comparison with the man she was currently in love with; the man who promised to never leave her behind. Despite her fatigue, Rose felt just slightly more alive again. 

“Do you like my ship?” The same cheery voice they heard on transmission came from behind them.

“Nah, not really,” the Doctor turned and greeted their host with an utterly unimpressed and somewhat annoyed voice. “I’ve seen far more impressive ships in my life. Some of them could even hold a deeper conversation than most sentient beings.” 

Their intruder stood in the rear doorway with his arms stretched between both jambs, the posture full of smugness. He was leaning on one of his legs, basking in the amber light coming from the corridor behind him which made his silhouette glow. _What was it with the aliens and their flair for dramatic entrances?_ Rose thought. 

He had a tall frame, thick black hair and сupid-bow lips that made him look like a long lost member of _Take That_ she and her friend, Trish, used to drool over back in school. He wasn’t Robbie Williams in his best years, though, but unlike most of the other aliens who wanted to invade Earth, this one was rather pretty. 

Salgur drummed his fingers against the jamb and swaggered towards the Doctor, his black biker jacket flapping in rhythm with his steps. He even dressed like he was going to a pop concert, Rose noticed.

“Oh, you are the mouthy one,” Salgur smiled, then turned his gaze to Rose. “Weren’t you supposed to be in another universe, sweetheart?”

Rose let out an exasperated sigh. “And how did you even get to know about it?”

“I have my sources,” he gave her his perfect smile of Mona Lisa after which he continued to appreciatively regard the Doctor. “And who’s this? I thought we’d have our little rendezvous in a more intimate company.”

“I’m the Doctor, hello,” the Doctor waved at the alien and flashed him a smile. “I’ve just got to this universe three hours and,” he made a pause, slowly walking towards Rose, “forty-four minutes ago, give or take, my newly formed brain is still quite unsettled.”

The Doctor hopped on the platform near her and leaned against the table, burying his hands in the pockets of his trousers and raising his chin high. Rose looked at his dishevelled hair, stern eyes, eagle nose with tiny freckles spread all around, his stupid beautiful face projecting extreme confidence. Other than the colour of his suit, he was so...well, him, that Rose felt her insides churn. She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and decided to pack her feelings in the far corner of her mind.

“And I was really looking forward to a nice healthy human kip, you know," the Doctor continued unperturbed, "but here you show up and interrupt my grandiose plans to hug the pillows. So what do you want? Found another just a bit bigger-brained buyers who decided to get humanoid pets? Need some guinea pigs for your experiments? Searching for organ donors? Craving for a mate? Cause whatever you’ve got in that cunning little head of yours, forget it. Earth is not for sale. So come on, drop us off, turn your ship around and, as Rose had so nicely put it before, get lost.”

The alien laughed and clapped, switching his attention back to Rose. “And where did you find this bloke? I must say I prefer him to that clueless chunky sidekick of yours.” 

Of course, Clive was a “chunky sidekick” now. The “chunky sidekick” that managed to, albeit accidentally, trap Salgur’s skinny arse in the Torchwood basement, much to the alien’s chagrin and her team's amusement.

“If my memory serves me right, the last time we met you _so_ bravely begged Clive to let you run free. I still remember your heroic snotty face promising not to return. I thought we made peace, Salgur,” Rose sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“The circumstances have changed,” he replied. 

“Oh did they? You thought, what, now that I’m supposedly in another universe, you would just go and help yourself with Earth?” she scoffed. “Honestly?”

Salgur shrugged his shoulders. “When you put it like that....” He walked up to her. “But you see, it’s not an invasion, Rose. It’s...integration.”

“Integration?” she asked dejectedly. “With whom is it this time?”

“My people.”

Sometimes Rose had a feeling that Earth was a sort of a prize in some intergalactic contest, where if you were bloodthirsty, ruthless or, in this case, sly and at least slightly obnoxious, you would certainly look at this planet and think “oh, I’d give it a go”. And then you’d go and put yourself in the long queue, eagerly waiting your turn and rubbing your hands in anticipation.

“And how do you imagine your integration?” She almost hoped to hear something new and original this time. 

“Oh you know,” he winked at her, “some ways more pleasant than the others.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Salgur.” Rose wondered if she would ever reach at least half of this bloke's self-esteem. 

“Why, I heard you were quite into non-humans,” he lowered his voice and took another step forward so that his face was inches apart from hers. 

His big brown eyes were just like the Doctor’s even if carrying less profound sadness. Rose could swear, however, that his eye colour used to be that icy shade of blue the last time she saw him.

“Whomever I’m into is none of your nosy business,” she poked his nose with her finger and pressed until his face was out of her personal space. “Now stop your little show and leave us alone.” 

All Rose wanted to do was to get home, go to sleep and forget this nightmare of a day ever happened. 

“What are your people to find here what they haven’t home? And what are your species anyways?” the Doctor asked, scrutinizing Salgur as if solving a riddle. There was also an edge to his voice, the one that sometimes appeared when he was in the mood to crash Mickey or Adam with the size of his brain (or, well, anyone, who succeeded to capture Rose’s attention for longer than thirty seconds.)

“Gherzeens,” the alien replied suddenly becoming solemn. “And we haven’t got a home. Not for a long while.”

“Anything related to Gwanzulum?” asked the Doctor, frowning. 

Rose looked at him with a question in her eyes. She hadn’t heard of either.

“Telepathic parasites,” he explained, annunciating the last word. “They leech on the host’s memories and take a shape of people they find there, draining the whole life force from their victim in the process.” 

Rose scrunched her face in disgust. 

“We hate them,” Salgur snapped. “They are a shame to our kind. We shared a common ancestry sometime in the past, but then evolved very differently. We know what compassion is and we are peaceful, what cannot be said about them.”

“Peaceful? You call this,” the Doctor motioned with his finger around the room, "being peaceful?” His voice rose in indignation.

Salgur looked at Rose instead. “We don’t plan on harming humans, I can promise you that.”

Rose regarded him for a long moment. If she had learned anything during her days in this universe, it was this: when you didn’t have a magical time machine or an extraordinary mind that could conjure up a hundred plans on a fly, you had to practice patience and at least try to talk them out of invading you while you waited for that one brilliant idea or luck, or both, to come your way. So she asked, “What happened to your home?”

Salgur swallowed. He completely dropped the cheerful pretence and suddenly looked very sad. 

“Time War,” he replied. 

The Doctor jumped off the platform. “What?”

“Ripples of the Time War between the self-entitled pompous bastards called the Time Lords and their true mirror-like reflection - Daleks were so broad, they wiped out half of the Adeki system, ours being the unfortunate half, obviously. What’s worse, we got thrown into another dimension, where our species never existed before, and have to float in space from planet to planet seeking our new home ever since. The real question is, how come you know about the Time War, Doctor?”

In a flash, Rose started to feel a dull headache, like her brain was getting too heavy for her head whilst someone tried to poke it with a stick. She watched Salgur and the Doctor stare at each other intensely. 

“I ended it,” the Doctor said in a cold voice. “Your feeble telepathic tricks won’t work on me, so don’t push it.”

The headache went away just as swiftly as it came.

“My people swore to kill every Time Lord or Dalek if we were ever to meet one,” Salgur sneered, approaching him. 

“Bingo! Today is your lucky day,” the Doctor replied.

Rose carefully moved to stand between the two, facing Salgur. “No one is killing anyone. Calm down, both of you. Salgur, this is your last warning.”

For all his bravado, Salgur wasn't a warrior type. That's why she was quite relieved when she got to know their intruder in the first place. In other circumstances, they could have even made good friends.

He took a few steps back. “Earth is doomed if it has a Time Lord to rely on. I must say I’m quite disappointed in your choice of company, Rose.”

“Tell me about it,” she whispered, then regained her voice. “Still, you can’t just come with your ship and decide to take over our planet. That’s not how it works!”

“I agree with you there,” Salgur nodded. “You see, love, you are a few decades too late. I’m not starting an invasion, I’m overseeing its, well, let’s call it a somewhat accelerated completion.”

“What do you mean?”

“My people have been living on Earth for years, trying to see how compatible it is. You haven’t even spotted the difference, have you?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, watching her. “Then ask yourself: why are you so eager to stop us?”

Rose didn’t have an answer to that. Wasn’t she an intruder herself? Could it be possible that in this universe humans and aliens could peacefully coexist on one planet? Was she making a mistake now? She was certainly in no proper shape or mental state to make any kind of decisions, yet she _had_ to do something.

“There is a difference between a couple of specimen hanging around and the whole extraterrestrial crowd just crashing the party. You can’t predict the consequences! What is it with living beings not thinking about the impact of their actions today?” the Doctor lashed out behind her back. 

“Oh, let me guess, you know best, don’t you?” Salgur countered.

“As it happens yes, I do!” bit the Doctor. 

“Well, your folk always knew better, and look where they are now,” said Salgur, a slow triumphant smile spreading across his face. 

The Doctor remained speechless at that but his heavy breathing spoke volumes. Rose suppressed a strong desire to punch Salgur in the face.

“I give you two hours,” she said. “If your ship is still here in two hours, Torchwood will make sure you end up in the natural history museum in the 'failed alien attempts to take over the Earth' section.” 

Salgur bristled at that.

“I take my words back, blondie. I’d rather you hung out with that useless one. If you think this fella is your friend you are far less intelligent than I thought you were. Time Lords don’t regard anyone’s opinions but their own.”

“Salgur-” It was never going to be easy, who she was kidding. 

“Let me give you a reality check,” Salgur pressed a button on a little black device on his wrist, which opened a portal of his size right beside him. “You are nothing but a little endearing human pet for him. And on that note - I bet he’s had plenty of those. You are not even the last in the line any more, are you? He praises you when you do something even remotely considerate, I’m sure he also finds you rather amusing. You are, in a way, believe me. I’m also certain he successfully stirs your decision making into the direction he wants, without you even realising it. Not your fault, though. Blame the evolution of mankind for your quite moderate intelligence.” 

He gave Rose the last glance before stepping into the portal. “You can find me once he tosses your pretty little self away for something more novel and exciting. Pity, such a disappointment.”

“Rose, he’s feeding on your-” the Doctor started.

“I know what he’s doing,” she interjected, taking a little metal object out of her jacket and turning it on. The slight buzzing sound filled the room, and the Doctor’s mind seemed to freeze when he saw the oh-so-familiar blue light on the tip of the thing. 

Rose felt like a bull charging at a red rag. The portal started to close itself, and all that was left of it was a small blurry spot in the air. She could sense a rush of energy in her veins, all that anger fueling her muscles, making them move quickly and precisely. She threw the sonic right into the middle of the portal, which caused it to reopen. Rose darted straight into it without a second thought, the Doctor right behind her. 

They found themselves on a night market on some unknown planet. She grabbed the sonic from the nearest stall it got stuck in and stopped to catch her breath. Salgur was nowhere to be seen, which made Rose groan in defeat.

“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked.

“Are you seriously asking me that question?” she snapped at him. The Doctor flinched at her outburst, temporarily lost for words. “Sorry,” she said and took another deep breath. Rose felt her anger subsiding until her head was clear again. 

“That’s a … sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor stated pointing to her hand. The fact that she had it seemed to pique his interest far more than the alien who just announced an invasion and disappeared. 

“Ya think?” she asked half-amused.

“No, that’s not just any sonic screwdriver, that is _my_ sonic screwdriver as in 'I made it myself'.”

“I didn’t nick it.” Rose rather hoped to avoid talking about this subject today, but if today was someone’s lucky day, it certainly wasn’t hers.

“I know you didn’t, thus the question,” he pressed, completely puzzled. 

She could still see the gurney with his dead body, his lifeless limp hand dropping down the sonic screwdriver together with all her hopes and dreams of reunion. 

“That’s a story for another time,” she replied. “I’m happy we at least can breathe.”

“You just ran into the portal without knowing if you wouldn’t suffocate,” he simply stated more to himself than her.

“Well, we haven’t. Would you rather we stayed on the ship?”

“Point taken,” was all he said.

She gave him back his sonic, which he closely studied the moment he got hold of it. 

“We lost Salgur in what even is this place - some sort of futuristic Camden market?” she asked, looking around.

The market was full of people, buying stuff, selling stuff, bargaining, laughing. Neon signs were flickering from everywhere, fighting their own battle for attention. 

“Nah, I’m sure he shapeshifted into another form by now,” the Doctor adjusted the setting on his sonic and scanned the air around them. He looked considerably paler than before, but Rose knew better than to ask him if he was fine - because he always was - and decided to keep a close eye on him. 

“The device he used,” the Doctor started explaining rather cheerfully for their circumstances, “is a more primitive version of a vortex manipulator. Some people even used to hack those and repurpose, but it rarely ended well. And when I say rarely well, I mean quite bad, really bad, with your limbs burst into thousand pieces in thousand different places at once bad.” 

He seemed to have caught a trail, and they started walking towards the aisle of stalls with steamy pots of yellow goo. 

“It helps to mask your tracks when you quickly need to escape from someone. All you need to do is pre-programme the device to, well, your final destination and give in, let’s say, four to seven intermediary coordinates in space and time. And voila, in the majority of cases, your chaser follows you to the first intermediary point, after which you jump another few times, while that big angry guy you conned gets stuck in the place you’d prepared for him. And I'm saying the majority of cases, because most people, unless they are me or, well, you, don’t have this brilliant thing,” he shook his sonic and cracked a goofy smile at Rose. “Wanna know why, Rose Tyler?”

“Why?” she asked, momentarily distracted by how much she missed the way he said her name.

“These devices, as I mentioned, are primitive and what makes them such is a huge temporal trail they leave behind, which means my sonic can trace it to reopen the portal to whatever the next destination is, and the next one after that. Isn’t that brilliant?”

“That’s handy,” she admitted, and he hummed in agreement. 

They reached the end of the aisle and turned into one of the obscure little passages. 

“All of those grim market stalls remind me of New New York,” he said absent-mindedly, still holding his sonic like a compass and abruptly turning to the opposite direction.

“What?” Rose asked. Did she really hear him say New New York? “It’s nothing like it!” she countered, taken aback.

“Oh, you haven’t seen it after a couple of centuries. Completely locked down. Poor Martha thought it would be a fun adventure, but instead got kidnapped in the process... I _promised_ her a fun adventure!” he complained. 

“You took Martha to New New York?” Rose asked. It shouldn’t have hurt her, but Salgur’s words did seem to get to her after all. 

“I...” something in Rose’s eyes must have given her thoughts away because at once he looked like if he could swallow back what he had just said, he would do it even if it would have choked him. Then he spotted something behind her back, “...see the second portal. Let’s go.”

They reached the end of the passage and stopped in front of the building with two little shops. 

“Now we only need to guess the right door,” he scrunched his nose, scanning each of them. He took a step back and looked up the building, searching for a clue. “The sonic shows two identical signals, and knowing those con men folks, one just might be a trap.” 

Rose studied two very same looking glass doors before her. They were both blinking with neon signs, one with pink and one with blue. Something inside the pink shop glistened, which caught her attention. She approached the door and leaned her hands to the glass. It seemed to be an antique shop, full of unnecessary dusty stuff, half of which Rose couldn’t even recognise. The thing that caught her attention, however, stood right at the entrance. It was a silver life-size sculpture of a grinning wolf that was holding a what seemed to be an open/closed sign in its menacing fangs. Rose stopped dead in her tracks. 

“What is the name of this shop, Doctor?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the sculpture.

The Doctor followed her gaze and read, “Bad Wolf.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, I'm having so much fun with this story. Most of my enjoyment comes from the unexpected learning while I write the chapters. The first draft of this one was quite a solid chapter (I mean, as much as one can be satisfied with his own writing, cause it's never good enough, really) but after I read it I realised it read like a sci-fi story but it didn't have that specific RTD era feel of the Doctor Who story, which meant, of course, I had to heavily rework the whole chapter (and well, now I'm a wee bit more satisfied, but there is still a long way to go.) But I'm so excited!
> 
> And thanks for all your warm comments, they were a helluva boost for my motivation, honestly! 
> 
> The next chapter will probably come in two weeks. Fingers crossed for that.


	5. On the borderline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Rose follow Salgur's trail and find themselves in all sort of places: a strange green planet? Check! An abandoned city above the clouds? Also check! A pirate ship? Bring it on!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sorry, I'm so not sorry...

The Doctor sonicked his way through the door of the antique shop. His eyes quickly adjusted to even darker surroundings, although it was nothing compared to the eyesight he’d had before. He suspected that his specs, if he had them, wouldn’t help either. The air was still charged with the temporal energy that powered up the portal, which made the hairs on his arms stand up. He tweaked the settings of his screwdriver until he saw a small dark opening in the air slowly getting bigger. The clouds of dust were flocking around them, and the Doctor felt a tickling feeling in his nose as if he was going to sneeze.

Sneezing. Out of all things, why sneezing?

“Rose,” the Doctor said, gesturing at her to get behind him. “I will go first and check what’s on the other side. Then you follow. The next place might not be as oxygen-friendly as this one.”

Rose silently walked up right behind him, and the tension coming off her was rivalling the one he felt from the portal. 

Bringing up New New York was certainly a bad idea, he thought. Well, he did mention it wasn’t fun, didn’t he? As if he was capable to have _fun_ back then when she straight up took his ability to enjoy the universe right into the parallel dimension with her.

The Doctor carefully stepped into the opening and found himself in the sea of tall grass. The sunshine was so bright it almost blinded him. He inhaled. The air was a bit lower on oxygen but nothing they couldn’t endure. And it smelled like warm honey. He looked up: the sun above him was glowing white, and a huge planet with its numerous rings was plastered across the whole sky. 

He beamed. _It was wonderful._ This place would certainly get Rose out of her grumpy mood.

“Rose, come over!” the Doctor called, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He stretched his right arm back through the portal and wiggled his fingers for Rose to grab his hand and come through. 

She did. 

Come through, that is. 

Without taking his hand. 

Oh _._

_Oh._

The Doctor suddenly became very preoccupied with studying his sonic with both hands. 

“Where are we now?” Rose squinted her eyes in the bright sunlight and raised a hand to cover her face. 

“No idea,” confessed the Doctor with as much nonchalance as he could muster. 

She gave him a side-eye. 

“What? I don’t know _every_ single planet in the universe,” he defended himself, “especially the parallel one!”

They did happen to find themselves on the undiscovered planets in the past when the TARDIS was in a special mood to show him off as the worst pilot in the whole wide universe. And he didn’t remember Rose throwing him doubtful glances back then. In fact, her glances were both improper and pleasantly distracting at the time. 

Rose caught the sight of a huge planet on the horizon. “This place looks straight out of Tony’s drawings. Is that Saturn?”

“Nope, Saturn is not the only planet with rings,” the Doctor answered. “It’s not even our good old Milky Way. We are in completely uncharted territory.”

“That we are,” Rose mumbled under her breath.

While her gaze was still glued to the sky, the Doctor found himself staring at her yet again. She looked different from those times when they happily ran hand-in-hand from all the troubles they'd got themselves into. Her face lost some of its roundness and most of the makeup, her features got more sharp and mature. There was also that special invisible glint in her eyes, the imprint of experiences she had gone through. He couldn’t wait to find out about those.

“So where now?” she finally asked. It brought him back to his senses. 

“That way,” he stretched his arm and gestured with his sonic straight ahead of them.

Rose started walking through the field, making the grass flow around her figure. The quiet rustling that came along with it encompassed him in its soothing arms. 

The Doctor looked down at his hand, his fighting hand, the hand that Rose didn’t take. He clenched and unclenched his fist, squeezing out the feeling of emptiness, then followed Rose. It would have been a nice little walk if not for the fact that the Doctor's feet were sinking into the ground after each step. And to think he had only got his new chucks on...

“You know, not that I mind, but I thought Pete’s World would offer a quieter lifestyle,” he decided to steer the conversation into a more positive direction. 

“What did you expect? Eating beans on toast and watching ‘Eastenders’ on the telly every day? Never took you for a delusional type,” she replied. If he wasn’t the only one around, he would have thought she was talking to someone else in front of her.

“Well, I imagined they would be called ‘Westenders’ here,” he teased, then added. “Would be interesting, I bet.”

“Yeah, for the first three hours,” a small knowing smile tugged at the corner of her lips. 

Well, she probably wasn’t wrong. Although, if he was honest, he’d give it two and a half. 

Well, more like two. 

One and a half for sure... 

...without a half…

...or an hour. 

The Doctor mirrored her expression.

“Good thing I didn’t come here for those things then,” he said on a more serious note. 

That also proved to be not such a genius thing to say. 

“You were left here by a more advanced version of yourself because rationally, it tied all loose ends in his mind.” The Doctor saw she wanted to say more but stopped herself before she even began. “You didn’t make any choice back there, so please, just don’t.” It seemed like all vitality had been sucked out of Rose. She was honestly pleading with him. 

“I _did_ , actually,” the Doctor said in a small voice. When it came to it, he was the only one who truly had a choice: to share his life with her the way he wanted and the way she deserved. 

“If so, then you must really have lost your mind during regeneration,” Rose hissed and shook her wrist as one of the blades of grass cut her on their way forward. 

The Doctor thought about everything he had lost over the years: his people, his planet, so many companions that travelled with him. And in the last couple of hours, he lost his heart, the ability to regenerate, a couple of ribs, better eyesight, respiratory bypass, the TARDIS that was his home for the past nine hundred years, his whole damn universe and a little bit of sanity, perhaps. And he could absolutely bear it for what he thought he’d get. If there was one single thing he certainly _didn’t_ lose, it was his mind. 

The Doctor clenched his jaw. 

“Rose,” he started with caution in his voice. Now he seemed to be losing his patience, too.

Rose inhaled sharply and quickened her pace. She reminded him of a volcano before the eruption. And experiencing quite a few throughout his whole adventurous life, he knew it was a matter of a very short time before he would be on a receiving end of it. 

“Rose, you are… you are not a loose end,” he said and was met with a wall of silence.

The universe was, in fact, against him today, the Doctor concluded.

“Here we are,” he suddenly stopped and pressed his sonic which opened another blurry spot midair.

They repeated the same routine with the third portal: the Doctor went first, Rose after him. He didn’t try to take her hand this time. She noticed but said nothing.

Their next destination greeted them with fog and drizzle. The Doctor and Rose came to stand on one of the stone platforms of a big settlement high up in the clouds. It appeared long-abandoned: there were no people around, the pillars that were supporting the roof were all rather peeled, the time itself seemed to have stopped in this haunted place. While Rose was shivering, the Doctor found himself a bit too warm. He scanned the air and motioned Rose towards the edge of the platform.

“I was thinking about what Salgur said,” Rose hugged herself tighter against the wind. 

“Which part?” asked the Doctor. 

“If they are peaceful and are simply after a new home, can’t we accommodate them? Why do I have more right to stay on Earth than Ghee-”

“Gherzeens,”

“Yeah, those. I’m not even from this universe. ‘s not fair.”

Sweet compassionate Rose, the Doctor thought. Rose, who would show mercy to a dalek and consider adopting a species of parasites, yet continue giving him a cold shoulder for doing what’s best for both of them. 

“Rose, I’ve had enough encounters with their cousin species to know that welcoming their whole population will not turn out so good for humans. Gwanzulum are amongst the most wanted by the Shadow Proclamation for a very good reason. And Gherzeens are just as strong telepaths. If they want to, they would turn your whole reality into a living nightmare for afternoon fun. Trust me.”

She finally met his eyes and nodded her head in understanding. 

“I guess, I just like pursuing the impossible,” she said when they reached the edge.

The Doctor opened the next portal and smiled at her, “And you do it brilliantly.”

The first thing the Doctor felt when he got through was a sensation of falling. A very ungraceful falling. After which, came a very ungraceful crawling, followed by just as ungraceful standing up. He felt quite dizzy and very unstable on his two legs. The Doctor could taste the saltiness in the air and smell a heavy scent of wet wood and fish. A ship. A sailing galleon at sea with a portal just a bit higher above the main deck. 

“Watch ou-” he started but never finished his sentence as Rose Tyler, also rather ungracefully, came tumbling down right into his arms, her elbow giving him a proper punch on the nose in the process. 

“Sorry!” she squeaked. 

“Oh oblem,” the Doctor replied, trying to put his nose in place, and blinking out the stars he started seeing in front of his eyes. Rose was clinging to his forearm now as if that would somehow fix his nose. Not that it was that straight in the first place.

“You should have told me there was falling involved!” 

“I oz telli you!” said the Doctor in a high-pitched voice. Rose Tyler had a lot of strengths but listening to his instructions was not one of them.

“And who the hell are you?” asked a bearded man from the deck above. “Oi, ye useless swabs,” he addressed someone behind him, “blow the skinny one down and fetch me the wench.”

The Doctor and Rose saw a group of twenty seamen emerging on the deck. They looked anything but friendly. 

“What do we do now?” asked Rose.

“We run into the opposite direction,” answered the Doctor.

“Yeah, about that...” The Doctor followed her line of sight and saw another fifteen people coming from the other side. “Any other ideas to not be captured by this...Blackbeard?” 

“Change of plans,” the Doctor said. The only escape route was right in front of them. Of course, it involved jumping overboard and taking an icy cold bath in the sea.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” muttered Rose when she realised what he had in mind, but the Doctor was already urging her to climb on the top of the taffrail.

“Now or never, Rose Tyler,” said the Doctor and grabbed her wrist. “Allonsy!” he shouted, pushing them both into the water.

They dived into the sea, and the Doctor discovered just how cold the cold felt to the human body. His grip on Rose was just as firm, and in a few seconds, they both resurfaced over the water. 

“By the way, have I told you I met Alonso?” he stuttered. The Doctor could distinctly see the ‘are you bloody serious?’ question projecting from Rose’s eyes. Her teeth were chattering so violently that he decided to re-organise his priorities. Right, he resolved, out of cold water first, catching up later. He fished out his sonic and opened the next portal a few feet away from them. He tightened his arms around trembling Rose and got them to the opening. 

“A desert?” the Doctor asked when they reappeared on the other side. “I hate deserts!”

He ruffled his hair to shake off as much water as he could. Rose was standing near him, bent in half, catching her breath and trying to suppress shivering.

The Doctor looked around. The desert was, well, a desert. A huge brown plane with a sun roasting them from above. He checked the readings on the sonic. 

“No way,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Rose, finally getting back to normal. She smoothed her wet hair off her face. 

“We are in a desert!” the Doctor pointed out.

“I see that, yes,” said Rose. “Where’s the next one?”

“There is no next one,” answered the Doctor. 

“What do you mean?”

“This is Salgur’s last destination. Well, usually I would expect a ship. Or a base. Or somewhere, anywhere from where he coordinated the invasion. Not a desert!”

“Maybe you've got it wrong,” supplied Rose.

The Doctor gave her a wounded look but ignored the comment and started investigating the surroundings instead. He found it harder to concentrate, the horizon was swimming in his view. Since when did he get so sensitive to hot temperatures?

“Where could he have gone? And why here?” the Doctor started. “Who in their right mind, Rose, would go to a desert and think ‘seems like a perfect place to manage invasion, occasion, equation, evasion, sensation-”

_Blimey._

“Doctor, we’re not on the rhyming-” Rose's face fell as she took him in - “contest,” she finished weakly.

“One point seven seven two four five three eight five zero nine zero five five one six zero two-"

“Doctor?” she slowly approached him like he was a wild animal. 

“Donna Noble has left the library, Judoon platoon upon the moon, are you my mummy?, she knows, you’ve got three fingers, no more, no more, no m- ” the Doctor fell to his knees, his fingers clawing into the sand. 

He _was_ losing his mind after all. The Doctor felt the memories collide inside his brain, his head being a personal little universe of supernovas with his mind crying out and playing its last unhinged hurrah. 

Calm down _,_ he told himself _._ Inhale. Exhale.

“What’s happening to you?” Rose’s voice sounded very strange and distant. 

“Metacrisis,” he said slowly after getting his tongue under control, “is a very complex thing. There is a reason it’s a phenomenon mostly described in texts rather than on practice.” He swallowed. 

A few seconds of silence that hovered felt like an eternity.

“Are you dying?” she asked very calmly, very unlike Rose.

 _Not if he could help it._

“Currently my brain is overloaded. The newly formed hippocampus is rather wacky because of the human DNA, which means it can’t cope with the load of all of my centuries-worth memories. Luckily for me, I’m high on regeneration energy, which means I need to get a good dayslong nap and my physiology will do the rest.”

“Now? You can’t,” she protested with a hint of panic in her voice.

“I. Have. To. Or else, I’ll die. For good,” the Doctor spat out. That was one scenario he couldn’t afford. 

He heard her breath becoming more shallow and uneven. 

“Then figure something out!” she shouted then. “I can’t have you lying around in the middle of a bloody desert when we have to sort out an invasion and have no clue how to get back to Earth!” 

"Sorry for not being the Doctor enough for that," he blurted out.

The Doctor could pinpoint the exact moment when Rose stopped holding back and got livid.

Finally _,_ he thought. He wanted Rose to be angry with him, to challenge him, to tell him he wasn’t the Doctor, so he could refute each and every point she had against him. Resigned acceptance, stranger-like politeness - that wasn’t his Rose. Not with him, never with him. Last time he changed, she gave him an opportunity to prove her wrong. He wanted her to do it again, but he was unimaginably out of time and oh, wasn't he always? 

“We’ve been through this once already, I thought you would have understood by now,” he groaned.

“You think I don’t believe you are the Doctor?” she laughed bitterly. “Of course. That’s easier to accept, isn’t it? A stupid ape who can’t put two and two together.”

“Rose, I…” he felt a burning sensation returning to his forehead. “I don’t have time for this now.”

“Oh, you never do!” she outright yelled. “Let me tell you something: one version of my dad was ready to let me die, only to save himself and his Jackie; the other one had died before I even came to that world, and became a brain of a machine; the current Pete denied I was his daughter until he couldn’t any more. And yet, wherever I went, I always tried to save Jackie and Pete. Do you know why? Because no matter what, they were my parents, everywhere! So don’t you dare tell me _I_ don’t understand.” 

Rose was shaking now, and it wasn’t because of cold water. She reminded him of a switch that went off, a rubber band that snapped after being pulled too hard, a volcano reaching its peak.

And then it erupted.

Right onto him.

“And it is quite hypocritical of you, don’t you think? Because having one heart is exactly what made ALL the difference in the universe for you!" It was hard for the Doctor to follow her thoughts but he tried nonetheless.

"Look me in the eye and tell me I wouldn’t have been dumped on that damned beach if you haven’t had your little handy side regeneration. No, _you_ don’t have the slightest clue. Because the truth is, I am the one in this situation who has to come to terms with the glaring fact that the only reason you stayed here is because of that one heart you despise so much. And if you still had two, you would have never chosen me!” She was crying now. “And here you are, dying on me? Again? Do you honestly think I wanted this?" she shook her head and sniffled. "So do whatever that is you need to do, and let’s go on with a mission.”

What was about to come wasn’t such a bad thing suddenly. 

“I will have to turn off a part of my brain. Specifically, the part that is responsible for centuries worth of personal experiences. I will still know who I am, but I probably won’t remember anything that happened to me, or anyone, even you. It will give me around twelve hours of functioning before even my reduced brain activity will be too much for this body to bear. After that, I will need to get into the restorative coma or the last bits of the regeneration energy will go out, and this body will collapse. Rose, it’s extremely important that you don’t try to trigger any memories, otherwise, my brain will burn. Hopefully, I can still do it.” 

The Doctor couldn’t stop looking at Rose. She was angry, tired, scared and in pain. He was angry, too: with the universe, with his other self, with his this self, with stupid intrusive aliens. Yet, it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because he realised she was the most beautiful being he had ever laid his eyes on. He missed everything about Rose: her humanity, her stubbornness, her face-splitting smile. He wished he lived to see it again. 

It was, of course, the most inappropriate time, but it was the only time the Doctor had at hand, and he learnt not to waste it any more.

“I love you, Rose,” said the Doctor, and the world has gone dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the chapter comes from the song of Tame Impala - Borderline (single version, not that album one). The lyrics just always gave me the vibes of these two. Honestly, check it out!
> 
> This is the most angsty chapter of the fic, I believe. The Doctor and Rose have to hit the bottom before they can even start to rebuild the mess that the start of their relationship is. Rose couldn't forever bury the feelings within her, if she was to get any closer to accepting him, she had to get her feelings out there. Also, I must say, I'm already loving the next chapter (which will come in the next week or two)
> 
> Hugs <3


	6. A little chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Doctor and Rose get roasted, Rose has some realisations, and the Doctor does what he does best - detonates (no matter if it's needed or not).

“Doctor? Can you hear me? Doctor!” Rose crouched over the Doctor’s unconscious form and lightly slapped his face. 

_Nothing_.

She hastily peeled off her jacket and leant her ear to the Doctor’s chest: his heartbeat was very faint but stable in its determination to keep going. That was a good sign, she bargained. The pulse meant life, and she was holding onto it as if it were her own. Rose wasn’t letting him die again, not on her watch. Third time’s a charm, her mum used to say. She very much hoped that was the case.

It became so hot, Rose felt she was melting away. Her damp clothes were sticking to her body, and that pesky sand managed to get into the places Rose wished no one could ever reach. She chewed on her bottom lip, tasting bitter saltiness from the sea they’d dived in before. 

Rose found herself experiencing a distorted sense of Deja Vu, only this time instead of a night street, daleks and attempts at a lighthearted conversation, he was completely expressionless, with beads of either water or sweat, Rose couldn’t tell, draining down his unnaturally pale skin. 

Rose’s eyes travelled along the Doctor’s endless lanky blue-suited body right till the muddy white toe tips of his chucks. Here he was, sprawled on the sand, with no water around and the sun mercilessly roasting them both for lunch. For a second Rose entertained the possibility of dragging him across the desert until she’d see at least some kind of shelter, but even her most optimistic projection didn’t sound inspiring.

She was going to wake him up, Rose resolved. 

Whatever it took. 

She balled up her discarded jacket and tucked it under his feet, then returned to hover over the Doctor, trying to cast a shadow over his head. Rose studied the Doctor’s face for any sign of movement, although it proved to be quite a challenge with the tears still pooling in her eyes.

 _What had even gotten into her?_ Rose chastised herself. Since when did she become so cruel? Was it all she was these days? A callous resentful little human? 

No wonder the other one, the one that _had_ a choice, left her... 

Rose started shaking the Doctor’s shoulder. She might have imagined the little muscle twitch on his face because he remained just as motionless as before.

This Doctor had been in visible pain, Rose kept thinking, yet she saw no better way than to dump all of her frustration on him. What a cherry on top! It was neither the time nor the place to sort out their issues. And to think, she had been so proud of herself before: she channelled her anger into catching the intruder, built a huge impenetrable wall between her rational side and emotions, and honestly praised herself for being so mature and calm about the whole situation.

Yet, the Doctor had to go and pull the rug from under her feet with his own sickness, and moreover, accuse her of lack of perspective. Suddenly Rose was sixteen again, shamefully dragging her feet home to mom after a nasty break up, accompanied by the phrases like ‘too stupid to hang out with’ and ‘too dull to achieve anything in life’ thrown at her at the end of the row, feeling like each statement was true. And just like that, the meticulously built wall evaporated as if it had never even existed, unleashing the unstoppable torrent of all the things she buried deep inside. 

Rose sighed.

She was a grown-up who launched herself through dimensions. 

She was the Defender of the Earth, according to some very specific unconscious aliens. 

The Defenders of the Earth didn’t throw tantrums in high-pressure situations.

What was even the point in confronting the Doctor when he was barely functioning?

The point was, Rose told herself, that she was supposed to be better than that. 

She sat back to catch her breath and wipe the tears.

And yet, she thought. 

...and yet a tiny part of her felt liberated the moment she finished her raging speech, and instead of loudly shouting at her every step of the way, her narky inner voice was quietly, almost imperceptibly whispering into her ear. 

She could live with that. For the time being. 

Just as Rose leant forward to continue shaking the Doctor into consciousness, his eyes flew open.

“Oh, hello to you,” he greeted her with a smile that could blind the whole galaxy. The Doctor jumped up so quickly, Rose almost lost her balance. He grabbed her hand and helped her to her feet, then regarded Rose carefully. “Look at you! Human! I love humans!”

“Yes,” Rose hesitated at first, torn between expecting and being totally baffled by this turn of events. 

She then firmly grabbed the Doctor’s face with both hands and thoroughly inspected him: his eyes were clear, even though the pupils were dilated, the colour returned to his face, there was no trace of any internal bleeding, although his body temperature felt somewhat higher than hers. 

She stared at him for a few more seconds.

He stared back.

“Is there something on my face?” the Doctor blinked at her, obediently staying still. 

“No, why?” asked Rose, distracted by the sight of all the sand clumping around his hair.

“Well, you seem to be very concentrated on it,” the Doctor’s eyes shot to her hands that were still resting on his cheeks. 

Rose took them off his face as if burnt. “Just checking if you aren’t growing a second head or losing this one.”

“Ah,” he said slowly, studying her with even bigger interest. “Maybe we should get you examined. Which century you say you come from?”

Rose sighed. A clean slate indeed. At least an alive one, she reminded herself with a wave of relief.

“How do _you_ feel?” she asked. 

In a way she still expected him to do something absolutely unexpected.

“Oh,” he scrunched his face in disgust. “No no no no no no no no no. That must be a joke! Only one heart?” he started feeling his body with his hands and poked near the abdomen. “What’s with the liver? This is hideous! And the body temperature! I’m on fire!” he complained to himself in utter despair. Then he noticed Rose again. “Do you by any chance know who did this to me?”

_Oh boy._

“At one point you were regenerating, and then you somehow poured the energy into a hand and...” Rose started gesturing to help her convey what her tired mind was still processing, then gave up after she saw his confused face getting even more puzzled, and decided to go plain and simple, “Part human, part time lord metacrisis - that’s what you said.” 

The Doctor nodded at that, but his mind seemed to have caught up on the realisation a few moments later. “Oh. Of course, that must have been human DNA meddling. Right. Still, could be worse. Well, not _much_ worse. _Well_...” he stopped his tirade and squinted his eyes at her. “I haven’t,” he said in a voice that usually preceded a thousand ‘sorries’, “with you, have I?”

Now Rose was the one to frown in confusion. 

He gave her that particular look as if she had dribbled on her shirt, and explained more eloquently and slowly. “Was it your DNA mine merged with for metacrisis?” He looked openly concerned.

“Oh,” she shook her head in horror. “No, it wasn’t”.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“One hundred percent?”

“A billion. Trust me, you wouldn’t want that.”

“Right you are,” he sized her up with a dubious look, and Rose buried the urge to slap him right away. “And where is the human that it happened with?”

“Took off with another version of you.” Rose crossed her arms on the chest defensively. 

So, as soon as he lost his memories, he found the prospect of having her DNA … repulsive? She might not have been the best humanity had to offer, but there surely were people worse than her to share one’s DNA with. Not that she’d want that herself. After all, that would be a tad too weird even for them. But still!

 _What an unbelievable arse_ , Rose thought. _And I'm stuck with him._

“Another version of me? Oh yes! Yes yes yes, of course! There is two of me now! That’s brilliant! And terrifying. Certainly terrifying. Very much terrifying. Ter-ri-fying,” he played with each syllable in his mouth as if tasting it. 

“Don’t do that,” Rose commanded. She had enough of his wordplay before he lost it, and the last thing she wanted right now was him losing it twice. 

The Doctor didn’t even acknowledge her, too focused on his own thought process as he went on.

“Human DNA must have kicked in rebuilding the rest of my body. With modifications, obviously. But that means my... hand, you said,” he glanced at Rose, “must have been charged with regeneration energy, which means I must have been dying, which means…” he framed his forehead with his fingers and started pacing back and forth, sand softly crunching under his feet. “Oh, so many thoughts. Wait, no, you will take your turn,” he said to himself, “oi, what was that for-” he winced, then ruffled his hair and settled his eyes on Rose with the most important and inevitable question. “How do I look?”

Rose snorted at that and got immediately reminded that snorting was not the best course of action when you’d just been crying. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and met his gaze again, a tiny bit embarrassed.

How did he look? His wide eyes were full of somehow innocent awe and seemed to hypnotize Rose into leaning closer, his hair was a sandy mess, sticking into all possible directions, calling out for her hands to make it right again. He looked like the man she loved, the man she spent the past three years searching for, and the man who shattered her heart to pieces and stomped on them for the better effect. So she said, “Still not ginger.” 

The Doctor's shoulders slumped at that. He resembled a child who had been given a biscuit that got immediately taken away once he was about to bite it. 

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Their surroundings had finally caught his attention. “Where are we? It’s quite hot in here don’t you think?” He did a little twirl around himself until he was facing Rose again. 

“We are in a desert somewhere, I’m not even sure if it’s Earth. And we’ve got to stop the invasion back there,” she explained.

“Humans,” he chuckled. “Always getting into trouble, aren’t you? And no, we are not in a desert and not on a planet. We are in a simulator. And a very realistic looking one at that! Bravo! I haven’t been in simulators in...” he paused, not sure, “a long time, I think. Anyways.”

“How do you know that?” Rose asked.

“Well, I happen to be very clever,” he said proudly. 

Rose rolled her eyes. The Doctor could change his whole body and personality, forget most of his life history, but the intrinsic instinct of being unapologetically full of himself remained no matter what. 

The Doctor took her by the shoulders and turned to the side, pointing his finger to what looked like a red rectangle sign in an unknown language floating a few feet above the ground. 

“Is that an exit sign?” Rose asked incredulously. It looked exactly like every ‘way out’ sign in any tube station back at home. But red. And floating.

“Yeap,” he said with a pop. “A simulator like this requires a tremendous amount of maintenance and energy. For a ship, it would be too much. My hunch is - we are on a base. And usually, I have a brilliant hunch. Me.”

“Uh-huh, and a knack for modesty,” Rose supplied.

He preened at her words, then the sarcasm seemed to register with him. “Wait,” the Doctor said, but she left his side and strolled towards the exit.

Rose carefully stretched her hand forward. It pressed against something flat and solid.

A wall.

A reflecting wall, like a … mirror? 

That was odd, Rose thought. She couldn’t see her own reflection.

Rose brushed her hand against the surface until she heard a soft click, and the part of the mirror dissipated, revealing a sliding door, which happened to be properly locked. Not like she expected anything different.

“Azatian reflectors do wonders with your visual perception of space,” the Doctor informed Rose when he came to stand beside her. “They are incredibly expensive and very efficient masking particles, but extremely whimsical in use. You have to be very careful when installing or handling them, one mistake would cost your whole piece to fall apart. Oh, you beautiful thing,” he smiled, running his fingers across the wall. “Now,” he addressed Rose with the authority of a magician preparing an audience for a 'rabbit out of the hat' trick. “Do you want to see where this door leads?” 

He wiggled his eyebrows and buried his hand in one of the trans-dimensional pockets on his jacket, fishing out a seashell, a whole pack of edible ball bearings and a leaflet from some spa. Growing more and more perplexed, he moved to another pocket, the contents of which made him uncomfortably clear his throat. Rose watched him silently, trying to conceal the bubbling wave of laughter that threatened to spill out. 

“Ah, here you are,” he finally retrieved his sonic screwdriver. He checked it from different angles like he was expecting something totally different. _What kind of design is this?_ she heard him mutter to himself before pointing it at the door. 

When the Doctor activated the sonic, the door shook, loud and proper. A myriad of bright sparks snaked their way through steely surface until they turned into flames that popped every now and then with a sinister crackling noise. The door, naturally, remained just as sealed. Some reflecting pieces fell off the door jamb, revealing a nest of wires underneath, and in an instant, the whole wall started flickering with colourful stripes. The little explosion was, judging by the Doctor’s flabbergasted face, not what he was expecting. 

Rose giggled. 

“Sorry,” she said, sounding not sorry at all.

Then she giggled some more.

"Well that'll be enough!" he sulked.

Rose collected herself and outstretched her arm, prompting the Doctor to give her the sonic. He kept staring at her hand with a wounded expression. 

“This is not a toy,” he told her.

“I know, and before you blow us up I’d rather get out of this place. Now give me the sonic,” she reached to grab it from his hand, but he raised it higher, just out of her reach.

“It’s a very complex thing,” he continued.

“You are using the wrong setting,” Rose replied. 

“No, I’m not!” he argued.

She almost forgot how stubborn this alien could get defending his questionable ways around his own tech, so instead of jumping to pluck the sonic out of his grasp, she kept her arm stretched.

Palm up.

Fingers wiggling.

Waiting... 

Well, she could be stubborn, too.

“So you planned to detonate the door? Decided to storm through the flames for the drama?” she pressed. 

When Rose thought about it, nothing really changed since the time he appeared in her life and blew up her job. He was still arrogant, still alien, and still a disaster of an idiot.

The Doctor hesitated, although his expression told her she won their little battle. He pouted but let her have the screwdriver. “Well alright, grumpy face.”

“I’m not,” Rose grumbled, concentrating on the right setting, “a grumpy face.”

She pointed the sonic at the door, and it silently slid open, revealing a long white corridor of a base. The dumbstruck expression on the Doctor's face when she returned him his screwdriver was absolutely priceless.

For the first time today, Rose Tyler was enjoying herself. 

“So, what’s your name?” he asked from the threshold as she went back to pick up her jacket from the sand. 

Rose was about to reply but halted as his own last words echoed in her mind ‘don’t try to trigger any memories, otherwise, my brain will burn’. Was it safe to tell him her name? What if it would trigger the memories back? Why couldn’t he have been more specific with instructions? Not once he was ever specific enough with his instructions!

“Doesn’t matter,” Rose answered. She dusted off the jacket and returned to the Doctor. 

“And why not?” he raised his eyebrows at her.

“Because I’m trying to keep that dusty head of yours intact,” she replied. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t say anything more on the topic, but his expression shifted to that of contemplation, the one through which Rose could feel just how incredibly old he really was, and Rose could swear there was a naughty little twinkle in his eyes as he looked at her. 

Oh, Rose was certain he was up to no good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a tough one. The main ideas came quickly but the execution was really hard this time (it probably has something to do with me having more work and more outdoor activities).  
> Anyways, I'm happy it shaped into the chapter my internal critic approved. 
> 
> And thank you for sticking with this story so far. I can't properly describe how much it actually means to me <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Since I'm just starting on the whole writing journey with this pairing and since English is not my mother tongue, I will deeply appreciate any feedback from you. Apart from that, if you liked the story and just feel like doing it, I'm currently looking for a Beta, who would help me make this story even better.  
> Cheers and thanks for reading!


End file.
